An Evening of Long Goodbyes Read online

  ‘Okay,’ I agreed.

  ‘Quark,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Word,’ she said. I realized she had begun to read out the list. ‘Excel. PowerPoint…’

  It was a long list; every so often she would glance up to see if I was still there. As she went on I felt shame creep up my cheeks. So many languages, so many applications! How was it possible I had failed to master even one? On and on she went ‘VOID. Basic Basic. Advanced Basic Basic’ – and I could do nothing more than sit and listen, as she recited the string of meaningless words like some awful futurist poem!

  Finally it ended. Gemma stared at me keenly. I cleared my throat and made an invisible adjustment to my tie. ‘Charles,’ she said, ‘this may be premature of me, but I’m guessing that your multimedia skills are at a more or less equivalent level to your IT?’

  I nodded dumbly. I was wondering if now was the time to bring up my can-do spirit.

  ‘So in short, Charles,’ Gemma stood up rather abruptly to look out at the spice garden, ‘it’s fair to say you’ve never worked for a living, is that right?’

  ‘Not as such,’ I admitted. It struck me that I had tended to Father’s peacocks for a number of years; but I wasn’t sure how relevant this experience would be, and given that most of the peacocks had actually died in my care I decided it might be better not to mention them at all.

  ‘Interests?’ Gemma said. ‘Hobbies?’

  ‘I like watching old films,’ I said. ‘There’s usually something good on in the afternoon, around lunchtime.’

  ‘Yes.’ Gemma rattled her nails against the slate-grey veneer of the desk. ‘I need something more proactive than that, Charles. You have to help me out a little bit here. What is it, tell me what it is that you want to be.’

  ‘Be…?’ I had never really wanted to be anything specific – not like Bel, say, who had wanted to be an actress since she was twelve, and before that put considerable preparation towards the day she became Tsarina.

  ‘Put it this way, where do you see yourself in five years’ time?’

  I rested my finger on my bottom lip. It was a compelling question. Five years! I imagined my future self, who had mastered the intricacies of this complex world, and the trappings of my successful life there. I pictured myself in a sumptuous suite, with Art Deco prints and mirrored ceilings and automated windows overlooking the city, where I would sit at my computer effortlessly typing Solutions. I envisioned the fashionable bars where I would drink gimlets with my new friends, and how at the weekend we would go Go-Karting, or to see Cats. I looked rested and content. Everything was provided for; life was good. But then I thought, five years, and I wondered, just out of curiosity, what Amaurot might look like then – and instantly the parallel universe of my successful career dissolved, and I was back walking through the orchard in a smoking-jacket, beating away at nettles with a good stick, while on the lawn Bel paced back and forth with a sheaf of papers, murmuring the lines of the play she was auditioning for, and Mrs P appeared on the doorstep with a jug of lemonade, and so did Mother, and Mirela, and anyone else who wanted to be there, all of us just there and not worrying about how, or why –

  ‘Charles?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, disorientated. ‘That’s right. Five years. Well, anywhere, really. That is to say, I’m not particular.’

  Gemma sighed. ‘Charles, you see, that’s just no good. How can I place you if you don’t even know where you want to be placed? Today’s employer wants commitment. He wants to know that you share his dreams and ambitions. Because that’s how this boom came about, Charles. It’s not just about US venture capital and drastic cuts in Irish corporate tax. It’s about a group of gifted young people brought together by a dream. A dream, Charles, do you see? It isn’t enough for someone to just wander in off the street looking for their slice of the pie, if they don’t understand what the pie even is, Charles. I mean, do you even want the pie?’

  ‘Well, I want to eat,’ I said agitatedly, ‘you know, and I’d quite like to sleep in a bed again –’

  ‘Of course you do!’ Gemma said. ‘Of course you want to live in a nice place and drive a big car. Who doesn’t? But the prospective employer needs more than that. And my concern is that when I fax him this,’ she lifted the application form, ‘what he’s going to see is not the individual of flair and imagination that I know you are, but someone whose life just stopped, three years ago.’

  I blanched. Stopped? How could she say that, when so much had happened? Bel’s passage through college, her string of unbroachable men, my efforts to reprise the courtly life of the Renaissance, Mother’s collapse, Mrs P’s collapse, Father’s death and all the screaming at that horrendous funeral –

  ‘Okay,’ Gemma said brightly, clapping her hands to her thighs. ‘Charles, I want to thank you again for coming in today. And I’m not going to say goodbye, because I know that you’re going to come back in here as soon as you’ve figured out what you want to do.’ On her noticeboard, the photos seemed now to have taken on a melancholy tint, as if somehow they’d turned their backs to me. ‘Because there’s a place out there waiting for you. It’s only a matter of wanting it enough.’

  ‘What?’ I said dazedly. ‘Oh…’ realizing she’d stretched out her hand. I shook it limply and got to my feet.

  ‘So see you soon,’ she said, pointing me towards the exit.

  ‘See you soon,’ I said.

  ‘See you soon,’ the beautiful receptionist said as I passed back through the lobby; and the fragrance of lilacs accompanied me a little way down the street.

  The city seemed quite different now. The sun had gone in and a louring gunmetal sky hung over the streets. All around huge cranes laboured, drills snored, jackhammers juddered. The noise was earsplitting, and with every step it became more unbearable – the din, the hustle, this endless parade of unfamiliar faces, each presenting its own split-second interrogation before merging back into the amorphous throng.

  Coming down Clare Street, I saw that a coachload of elderly Americans in space-age rainwear had become snarled up with a mass of pasty-faced native schoolchildren, and thinking to avoid them, I ducked through the Lincoln Place gate into my alma mater. Immediately I wished I hadn’t, because I saw at once that not even Trinity had been spared the ravages of the new era. Sanding machines assailed the Museum building; a veritable Golgotha of a library was being raised to the west. With a sudden fretful pang I sought out the little grove of trees in a secluded corner of the cricket pitch where, one woozy outrageous night, Patsy and I had come closest to consummating our love, or my love anyway. But it had been railed off, and from behind the palings a bulldozer could be heard, devouring. It was depressing. I wondered at these glossy people who didn’t seem to care, who walked blithely through the destruction as if they had been born yesterday.

  I was walking through New Square wrapped in sombre thoughts when somebody called my name. I turned to see a flabby office type in a cheap blue suit. He was standing with his hands in his pockets on the ramp leading up to the Arts building, where Trinity’s high society traditionally gathered to snipe and flirt and smoke countless cigarettes: I thought at first he must be a ghost, or a shade stepped out of my memory.

  ‘It is you,’ he said. ‘I thought I recognized the, ah…’ He tapped at his breast. I looked down and saw that the monogrammed corner of my handkerchief was protruding from my jacket pocket.

  ‘Hoyland Maffey,’ I said. ‘Well, well.’

  ‘Been a while,’ Hoyland said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. After that, I didn’t know quite what to say; neither did he, obviously, and for a moment we stood there awkwardly, unsure that we wanted to take the conversation any further.

  ‘Funny I should run into you here,’ he said, gesturing at the trees, the architecture. ‘What are you doing, reminiscing?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose.’ His spare tyre had inflated noticeably – yet at the same time he looked lessened somehow, not so Hoylandy as he h
ad been. No doubt he was thinking the same thing about me; I could see him glance covertly over my bandaged head, debating whether or not to ask me about it. He didn’t; the silence reached an embarrassing level. ‘Well!’ he said peremptorily.

  ‘Yes!’ I followed with an uncomfortable laugh, and was making to take my leave when he said again sharply: ‘Charles –’

  ‘What is it?’

  His blue eyes flickered over the rococo structure of the Campanile. ‘I just wondered,’ he said in a tight, strained voice, ‘if you still had those peacocks?’

  I flushed, and did not reply right away. And then the old response came into my head, and with it the croquet games, the flaneuring, all the warmth of our past lives. ‘As a matter of fact I do,’ I said. ‘And you – you had seabirds, as I recall? I believe you kept several egrets?’

  Hoyland stood a moment, looking off into the distance. ‘Egrets?’ he said. ‘I’ve had a few. But, then again, too few to mention…’

  Students glanced disdainfully at us as we exploded into guffaws and then performed the secret handshake; then Hoyland pointed out that it was lunchtime and, having nothing to look forward to but an afternoon in my slum, I agreed to let him buy me a sandwich.

  ‘Blasted new era,’ Hoyland said through a mouthful of crab salad, gazing dyspeptically down the long ornate hall at the swarming financial types eating gourmet luncheons. We were in one of the new cafés, an airy, wooden-beamed chamber plastered with posters from the 1920s; I had just asked Hoyland why he was wearing that lamentable suit.

  ‘I shouldn’t be here at all, you know,’ he said. ‘I’d retired from public life. Moved back to the Kingdom, thought I’d work on my fly-fishing for a few months before embarking on any more disastrous – well, you know. Best-laid plans of mice and men, Hythers. Arrived back in Kerry to find a full-scale war going on between the old man and the town council.’

  ‘A war? I say, you were right about this sandwich…’

  ‘It’s the mozzarella. They import it directly from the Tyrol, by helicopter.’ He dabbed his mouth with a napkin. ‘Anyway, it seems the council passed some sneaky law when no one was looking allowing them to build holiday homes all over the headland. Place is covered with ’em. Horrific things, sort of like upmarket sardine tins. Idea is they lie empty ten months a year then in July you’re invaded by a horde of ancient Germans Heil Hitlering each other in the village grocery. Now they want to turn the park into a golf course – ah, thank you dear…’ as the waitress dropped down our coffees. ‘Well, naturally the old man’s had kittens. He’s retained about every solicitor in Munster, spends the whole day storming around the house muttering about Dunkirk. “We will fight them on the beaches, Hoyland,” he says. I’ve lost count of how many actions he’s taken. They’re suing us back, of course.’ He picked gloomily at the cheap fabric of his cuffs. ‘In the meantime, no one has two pennies to rub together. And instead of having a little time off to think about, you know, one’s life, one’s direction, the old man’s sent me back up here, to earn money for the War Effort – he calls it the War Effort, Charles. I tell him I can barely make enough up here to keep body and soul together. He doesn’t listen.’ He heaved his shoulders jadedly. ‘Hence this regrettable downturn in my fortunes. What about you?’

  Taking a deep breath, I gave him a summarized account of the story, from my selfless bid to save Amaurot to my current state of exile and my ignominious attempts at finding a job.

  Hoyland was shocked. ‘A job? You?’

  ‘’Fraid so.’

  ‘But what about that Italian thing you were always busy with – what was it, spirulina…?’

  ‘Sprezzatura.’

  ‘That’s it, what about that?’

  I shrugged. ‘Needs must, old man.’

  ‘I never thought I’d see the day when you had to get a job,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘What kind of a bally world is it, anyway?’ He looked thoroughly despondent.

  I was surprised: I didn’t recall him ever being quite this downbeat before. ‘It could be worse,’ I suggested. ‘At least a man can make a decent living nowadays, I mean I gather they’re having some sort of a boom…’

  ‘Ha!’ Hoyland said.

  ‘Ha?’

  ‘It’s a sham,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing but a blasted sham.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m not denying people are getting rich. But I’ll tell you one thing, Hythers, it’s not the chaps on the ground like you and me. Rudimentary knowledge of theology doesn’t get you far these days. It’s all computers now. We’re just drones, as far as these technology people are concerned. We’re bottom of the heap. Yesterday’s news.’

  ‘It can’t be that bad,’ I said.

  ‘It is,’ he said, mopping his plate with a hunk of bread. ‘It’s worse. Look at me, Hythloday. Look at these wrists. I used to have the wrists of one of those twelve-year-old Russian piano prodigies. Now they’re worn away to nothing. I sprained one playing ping-pong the other week, ping-pong, Charles!’

  ‘I say, you’re spitting, old man…’

  ‘I don’t care!’ Hoyland cried, pounding the table. ‘You’ll spit too, when you see what it’s like! Spending all day long typing blasted VOID and PowerPoint, going home to your shoebox of an apartment block with electric fences to keep out the locals, never seeing a soul from one day to the next – that’s no way for a man to live! I’ve lived before, I know that that’s not living!’

  The office types at the table next to ours had fallen silent and were shooting us wary glances.

  Hoyland took a deep breath. ‘Sorry,’ he said. He fiddled out a cigarette from the pack in front of him and lit it. I studied his tortured brow wonderingly. I felt a bit like Dante, chancing upon one of his old acquaintances in the nth circle of hell.

  ‘So this is the boom, eh?’ I said. ‘Not exactly Scott Fitzgerald, is it?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what it’s like,’ he said glumly. ‘It’s like being in Caligula’s Rome, and everyone around you’s having an orgy, and you’re the mug stuck looking after the horse.’ He pulled heavily on his cigarette. ‘The whole thing’ll come crashing down,’ he said bleakly, ‘and all anyone’ll have done is eaten a lot of expensive cheese.’

  Rain had begun to fall outside. Beside us the office types were jawing noisily about some takeover or other. Hoyland smoked the rest of his cigarette in silence.

  ‘Seen any of the old crowd?’ he said eventually. ‘Pongo, that lot?’

  ‘From time to time,’ I replied. ‘Pongo’s in London now.’

  ‘Lucky blighter,’ he said. He stared a moment into the middle distance, then in a casual voice said, ‘I hear Patsy’s back.’

  I made a little horseman of the salt cellar and marched him along the table. ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Yes, someone met her working in a café.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said colourlessly.

  ‘Christ, Hythloday,’ Hoyland said flatly, ‘we’ve been dopes, do you know that?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘You know what I mean. Not patching things up. Letting the whole gang drift apart for the sake of a girl.’

  I puffed up my cheeks and blew.

  ‘Well, damn it, what do you think?’

  ‘Oh hell,’ I said irritably, ‘I don’t know. It didn’t come out of nowhere, did it? Maybe it was meant to happen. Maybe that whole gang was past its sell-by date, and that was just the, you know, the catalyst. I mean, good God, if Patsy Olé was the only thing holding us together, Patsy Olé who has all the loyalty of the ball in a roulette wheel –’

  ‘So what?’ Hoyland said bitterly. ‘So now for the rest of our lives we just dwindle off into our own little private solitary worlds, is that it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘We can’t pretend it didn’t happen, can we? How should I know?’

  We fell into a fractious silence.

  ‘Sure, the public got burned in the buyout,’ one of the business types declaimed energetically next to us.
‘But that’s what happens in a revolution. You’ve got to understand that this is a whole new paradigm of management.’

  Hoyland fumbled out another cigarette but didn’t light it; then, catching sight of his watch, he swore and started to his feet. ‘I have to get back,’ he said. ‘My masters don’t look kindly on tardiness. But look here, Hythers – I’m glad we met. We should go for a brandy some time. I’m free most evenings.’

  I nodded mechanically. Suddenly everyone was leaving: massing round the door, unfurling their umbrellas. Hoyland reached into his wallet and handed me a card. ‘Do call,’ he said. ‘Silly to let everything just go to the wall.’ He hovered there a moment, blankly watching the exiting hordes, the unlit cigarette hanging from his lips. ‘I still think about her, you know,’ he said abstractedly; then he turned up his collar and passed with the others back on to the boulevard. In a few minutes, the café was almost empty.

  Damn it, I had forgotten how a fellow couldn’t go twenty yards in this city without running into someone he used to know, wanting to dig up the past. Maybe that was why they were knocking the whole place down. As the waitress moved from table to table with her tray, piling up the dishes, the old faces appeared in front of me out of the rain, like the cast of a play taking its curtain call…

  We had all been wild about Patsy, of course; though none of us would ever have claimed he truly knew her, or understood her. She was like the moon moving through the houses of the Zodiac – favouring each of us in turn, yet remaining always remote: her love a mysterious influence you couldn’t quite put your finger on but didn’t dare disbelieve. In retrospect it’s obvious she was quite happy in this orbit of her own, from which she could enjoy the chaotic effect she had, the squalls and storms and other aberrant weather patterns caused by her peculiar magnetism. But each of us had hoped that he would be the one who finally brought her to earth.